Swann's Way

very well that she was not sufficiently in love with him to be so
keenly distressed merely at having missed his visit, but as she was a
good-natured woman, anxious to give him pleasure, and often sorry when
she had done anything that annoyed him, he found it quite natural that
she should be sorry, on this occasion, that she had deprived him of that
pleasure of spending an hour in her company, which was so very great a
pleasure, if not to herself, at any rate to him. All the same, it was a
matter of so little importance that her air of unrelieved sorrow began
at length to bewilder him. She reminded him, even more than was
usual, of the faces of some of the women created by the painter of
the Primavera.' She had, at that moment, their downcast, heartbroken
expression, which seems ready to succumb beneath the burden of a grief
too heavy to be borne, when they are merely allowing the Infant Jesus to
play with a pomegranate, or watching Moses pour water into a trough. He
had seen the same sorrow once before on her face, but when, he could
no longer say. Then, suddenly, he remembered it; it was when Odette had
lied, in apologising to Mme. Verdurin on the evening after the dinner